Halloween

There is a candle on the table between us and he is staring into it with his soulful brown eyes and trying to be romantic. I think. He is a poet, a great poet. Everyone in the bar says so. He is touched by the grace and glory of words and he is unleashing a flood of them at me hoping to, I imagine, charm me out of my clothes. People just don’t do research anymore. Honestly, wearing them is awkward for me. If he wanted me out of them he could have had it with two simple words... strip, now... and I would have wept with gratitude. As it is, he’s talking and talking but I’m five thousand words back. I am back where he said I love the smell of fire.

Did you know that different fires have different smells? True fact. I know a guy, broad shoulders, shell shocked eyes, arms you can bounce watermelons off. Bravest guy I know. He is one of those people who, counter to all logic and reason and base born instinct, run into burning buildings for a living. He sits here, two nights a week, and climbs as far down a bottle as he can because five days a week that same drive tries to kill him but, because his luck holds fast, turns him into a god damned hero.

I like talking to him because he knows the same thing that I do although I imagined the circumstances of our gaining this knowledge were quite different, though it’ll likely play about in our ends the same. Certain fires, and their smells, freeze him solid. It is true. We’ve experimented (or, rather, I experimented one night when he was drunk enough to allow me to tie his sexy frame to an unsexy wooden kitchen chair). Burning books smell like the death of dreams. Burning flesh smells like lost potential. Burning money smells like freedom. Burning wood smells like home. Burning plastics, which is the most common smell in this post industrial cancer we live in, smells like desire. Burning oil makes the fireman piss himself.

There is a candle on the table between us and his is staring at it with his soulful brown eyes and trying to be romantic but anyone watching from us from a far will see nothing but how badly I am shaking. It is not want. It is not desire. At least, not as they feel it.

Mostly I am trying to stop myself from feeding the poet the candle to stop his terrible abuse of such lovely, powerful words.__

I found a community that embraces my eccentricities. I found a community that is okay with a fellow really disliking wearing clothes so long as I am a good boy, go to the gym, monitor what I eat and never EVER miss leg day. I won’t say they accept me fully but then, I know that such things are impossible. With October comes the great break. Anyone who has been around long enough knows it. And I truly love to think that there are wise old birds in the bar warning the young robins about me. It is not something I can control. It is just something that happens. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you mean to me. When October comes you’re being thrown out of my house. It is nothing personal my love; but gather your shit and go. You’ve changed. Yes. Now gather your shit and go. You’re a monster! Aye. Now gather your shit and go lest I eat you.

There is a reason why so many ghost stories are told about the fall. There is a reason for the jack-o-lanterns and the costumes even if we’ve all lost track of what that is and turned it into just another night to dress slutty and get drunk and laid. There is a reason fall is more closely associated with death then spring, even though, to be honest, the veil is thin in both seasons and the potential for magic, both good and evil is immense during both seasons. If you’re with me on the last night of September you are going to hate me by the third of October. If you don’t take the subtle hints by then my going at you with a knife usually will clear you from my space. It is October. I have work to do. I have WALLS to build and defences to man and above all things voices to silence. It is not that I didn’t love you. It’s not that you don’t mean something to me. It is just that with the din in my head I can’t hear you anymore and that isn’t right.

So please, dear one, gather your shit and go.

Besides, that bed which was the focal point of most of your interest in me is moving to the other side of the room. That dust guard of a carpet is getting whipped into the corner and candles placed in their places on the circle scratched onto the floor.

There will be much pouring of salt and blood in that circle. That closet where you tossed all your foul smelling running gear (seriously son, nobody actually likes the smell of sweat) has sconces nailed to the wall. I’m surprised you never noticed. There is a cross, heavy and brass- moulded in the old country, nailed to one wall and a glow in the dark picture of the Sacred Heart before a kneeler bolted to the floor. Seriously, you never noticed anything did you?

There is a great divide in October. A cleave more serious and profound and dangerous to me than the one in your perfect little ass. It goes back to a time when I wore black, and a collar, and with latin words flying from my lips I squeezed a woman’s throat until her eyes glazed over and her lips turned blue. His hands were on my shoulder the whole of the time, praising god and cheering my little soul on. It goes back to a time when I wore nothing, and they anointed my flesh with virgin blood and led me into the burning building where my destiny was waiting. She had her arm on my shoulder the whole time, whispering the comforting words that kept me safe and warm and enchanted as a toddler wrapped in a blanket at story time.

October is when the veil is thin.

It’s nothing personal love, honest.

I’ll be back in the bar by December.

I may have more scars.

I may be thinner and a bit more twitchy but it will still be me.

I just have to make it through October.

And I can’t do that while worrying about your naked gorgeous ass.

So gather your shit and go.__I am blindfolded in starlight, an apt metaphor really, and he is leading me across cold wet planks of wood. We are by the lake, but he wants it to be a surprise. I give him points for trying but really where else could we be? The air is oolder, and wetter, and I can hear crickets and loons. But he wants it to be a surprise so I go with it. I am blindfolded, on a dock, in starlight. He unbuttons my shirt for me and pulls it off. He lays kisses upon my cheek, lips, neck, chest. He is, really, rather thoughtful to a certain depth. There is much to love about him. His hands move about on my skin to keep it warm as he works on my belt, my pants. Hands and mouth make a work of me. He is a bit magic himself. With hands and mouth he stokes a blazing hot fire in me. He holds my insistent hands away from him which stokes the fire hotter. I am blindfolded, naked, horny in starlight. His knowledge of me is almost perfect. Cabins along the hill sides are burning fire against the cooling night. Fall is coming. October is coming. I could feel it every single day. My shields, built in ages ago by a man who prayed and a woman who just knew have been kicking in. I try not to be mean. I try to feel but the shields are going up. He almost had it perfect.

It is a lake though.

A lake: just stagnant water just sitting in a profoundly big hole in the ground. Pretty on the surface I guess but the dumping ground of how many sins and secrets from the cabins on the hills? I don’t even need to touch the water to feel cottage country rape or the desperate scream of the alcoholic that went under with a cinderblock tied to his waist. I don’t need to feel the cold black wash over me making me desperate to seek out the little specs of warm residual light... teens fucking... old people fucking... a dog happily swimming after a tennis ball... first beer with father... first beer with friends... all of it sits there waiting for me.He wants to make our own moment, our own little blob of warmth and light in the history of the lake.

And we will.

I WANT to care. That is the point. So I will give him this moment. I am naked, blindfolded in starlight when his mouth finds me and he starts working his simple physical magic upon me. And I will. I will give him this moment and I will try my best to ignore the smell of wood smoke on the air or the voices under the water calling out to me.__In truth, I prefer a river.

A river is a wonderful thing.

I would love to live my life on, or by, a river. Rivers don’t stagnate. They flow. The things that happened here wash away and become the ghosts of people downstream. They wash down into basins, and then into tide pools, and then out to sea where currents will push them into one of the dark places where they will be sucked down into the depths, forgotten forever.

A river is a conduit to the primal, and he and I don’t talk anywhere near enough. It is easier to talk to the other fella because the Bible Thumpers are right. He does listen to everything. He tries with all his might to block it all out because we are so very fucking loud in our heads. And there are a lot of us. And he is old. But he listens.

But the river... ah man.

I would love to live on, or by, a river. To strip down to my briefs and just walk out into it every day and let the current take me where it will. To say hello, and I am here, and use me. Send me where you need me mother. To wash up in some isolated copse somewhere where a pretty and tormented boy needs an exorcism from that terrible desire he feels for a boy he knows. To sit with him, and talk to him, and tell him that it is okay, despite what the Bible and his parents say. God is love, and love is what you feel here for him. Therefore, what you feel is God. You are still a good Christian. Now go fuck that fella gooood. What? You don’t know how? Let me show you...

To wash up amongst the god fearing people who are on the verge of denying logic and science and common sense to the muses of a desert tribe two thousand years old and to talk at them, use the words, to unlock them before their blindsided faith (which quickly becomes bigotry) makes them forget the true message, love. And in my minds eye, yes, I am still in my briefs in the front of their church preaching grandpa’s words at them. What? It’ll keep all eyes on me I assure you. And you have not lived until you’ve seen sixty year old church women fan themselves despite the cold day.

To wash up at a beach orgy where the pendulum has swung too far the other way and the hedonism is merging into a pure on lust for blood and magic. I have nothing against a party but when sensation becomes cruelty, when it becomes a thing about someone getting off by someone being used... Children, children... let me teach you a better way. I need volunteers! I need a boy, be brave, and a girl, be brave, and a heavy piece of wood...

It would be great to live on a river, where everything just washes away.

But this town only has a lake.

So, of course, it’s going to have to end with fire.__By Thanksgiving, shields or no shields, I am full on broken. Every window in my apartment will be open to engage a yearly war of cold air against the smells coming from the kitchen. I will not care. My answering machine will be full and there will be a stack of mail ankle deep by my front door. I will not care.

My life will be one of simple rituals that I can do in my sleep because it will be about all that I can handle. I will kneel in that circle, amongst the candles, with the mirror, and the knife and I will chant the words she whispers in my ear as her skeletal fingers rest upon my shoulders as they did all those years ago. I will make my cuts. I will stare into the mirror. I will shut down one side and listen only to the other and I will let the magic have me for the night. I will become great. I will become glory. I will become what she was and what my sister was and what my mother was. The last heir to magic. Oh, the wall is thin. I feel your fingers on me. I can pull you through, I can I KNOW I CAN please let this work this time!

I will wake, shivering, naked, cum covered in the circle desperate for something to drink.

My life will be one of simple rituals that I can do in my sleep because it will be about all that I can handle. I will take that leather bound book, the small cloth bag in which I keep is polished black rosary and the bottle of Holy Water and I will lock myself in the closet. I will pray, not to him, because he is old and tired and does his best to drown us out but to others to intercede on my behalf. The Sacred Heart of Mary. St Jude, of the lost causes. St Christopher (my name sake) the patron of travellers and lost children (and by proxy I guess amber alerts) my guardian angel, the Holy Spirit. I will lock myself in that cupboard and read from the book by the flickering red light of the sconce candles. I will focus on the picture of the sacred heart. I will say rosaries, rosaries, so many rosaries. I will call down the strength of the saints and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I will worship and cherish all things in Jesus’s name and I will thank him, God the Father and God the son for his abundance of gifts and pray for his wisdom to guide me. And I will feel him, his hands on my shoulders, encouraging me and praising me and elevating me up to the eyes of God as I kneel there and sometimes, sometimes, I feel her throat in my hands and not the rosary beads. I will wake, collapsed and crumpled in that little cabinet, shivering and weak but Holy and Blessed.__On the last day he stood, blindfolded, naked, in starlight. He was a better man than I. He stood, on Halloween, in a boat. His partner, a beautiful man with broad shoulders and shell shocked eyes and arms you could bounce watermelons off had stayed with him the month. He was a stronger man than I. They kissed on that boat, somehow didn’t overturn it and he stood arms spread, head up to the stars. His partner worked the rope around his waist, over his hips, through his legs. It was a slow thing. It was a passionate thing. He never once took his eyes off of him. When he looked back down the rope was secure. The blindfold had slipped. His eyes, I later heard, had sucked up all the light from the sky. It was weird. It was the darkest night I had ever seen.

There was no moon. There were no stars. There were only... his... eyes. I don’t think my eyes have been the same. I think he burned them out.

On the last day he watched as his partner tied the cinderblock as thoughtfully and slowly as he had bound his mate. They kissed and in the middle of that the block dropped and he fell in. The last day. The last attempt.

“I’d like to say,” the fireman tells me on a different night when we were both swimming in the bottom of a two hundred dollar bottle of scotch. “That it was a romantic moment but it fucking wasn’t. He overturned the damn boat when he went in. I broke water laughing. It was the hardest and best laugh I ever had in my life because it was... I don’t know...”

“Everything.” I slur. “All the feels, at once.”

“Yea.”

“Better than crying.”

“Yea.”

__ Sisters don’t do well in my family. My uncle had a sister. The night that he went into the water she was in the back of a Pontiac screaming rape and beating a young theology student in the face with her purse. She was a tall willowy redhead. You could see bits of it hanging down from the sweater that was pulled up over her head. The radio was on. Bobby Darren. Her choice. She had nightmares, you know, the kind that make you want to squeeze your thighs together because of the tingles, to getting raped to Bobby Darren. The blue eyed god-boy went with it because, well, her eyes were green and her hair was read and her breasts were the most incredibly beautiful thing he had seen in his life. While her big brother went into the water to let things greater than him make their fucking choice there was no question in her mind. God boy was hot, the man of her dreams, and the games were fun. When the night was over and they sat against the car smoking cigarettes there was no question at all. She wore only her sweater. He was trying to straighten down his oiled hair.

“Where are the stars?” he asked finally.

She looked up and, the story goes, that’s when my mom finally started screaming for real.__The boy with the nice ass makes one last attempt at me. I don’t know what day it was. It was a dark day. On a light day, he wouldn’t have found me. The closet would have been locked and besides, who really looks inside closets when looking for someone? But it was a dark day when he found me. So when he came in he found me in the circle of salt, staring into the mirror and focusing my energies on the creature staring back at me. The more I gave him, the more he gave me. Simple magic. Our power can’t affect this world. But it can ravage theirs. Likewise, his magic, works wonders here. So an exchange with the only person I could trust. I’ve a hand out feeding him, another hand palm up, accepting. A perfect sexy sweaty conduit. I can’t count the number of times I’ve stroked off thinking about this communion.

The boy with the nice ass comes into the front room. I don’t hear him. I don’t see him. Not really. But I can feel him. He is young energy. He tickles the shields in a cute way but it is kind of distracting. He is saying something. I can hear words. He is crossing himself and saying something. I do not look at him. Conduits don’t break easily and when they do, there is spillage. Electricity kills, don’t touch power wires unless you know what the fuck you’re doing you know? I close my eyes and focus. I push my shields out.

I try to push him back.

In the mirror I see my past.

His hands on me. My hands on her.

Sisters don’t do well in my family.

God chants as we cleanse the witch.

In my hands I feel flesh.

I feel struggle.

I feel fury and rage and fear wash up over the shield, final blows.

I feel...

..nothing.

The conduit reopens and I feed a lot more energy into the man in the mirror. His eyes glow and he smiles and shoots extra my way.

I sleep that night, for the last time, on a familiar, though now sadly cold shoulder.

You should have gathered your shit and gone.

__

By Halloween I am gone. This is why you couldn’t be here. I knew that this was the one. I mean, there is a history for it. He was twenty eight when he fucking gave up and let them choose what would happen to him. I am twenty eight. But I am not him. I never was. I am better than. I am stronger than. By Halloween I have left it all on the table as it were. It is Halloween and I have brought them all home. I have brought them all back to this fucking place. I have brought my mom, my sister, the aunts, my grandmother, the whole magical fucking line is here with me. So are my father, the preacher, my grandfather, the hunter. My uncle is standing in the corner looking at my pentagram on the floor nodding. I’ve done it. I’ve brought them all back. The Fireman stands shivering behind me. He smells the chemicals. It is weirding him the fuck out. My uncle sees him and his dead eyes go wide. I hold up my hand and shake my head. The last family gathering. God and the Devil. Magic and Faith. And the idea that love can create a hybrid that can fucking live with itself.

Ha.

“The stars are gone from the sky.” The Fireman says behind me.

“Yea.”

I hear him strike the match. I turn to face him.

I have my eyes closed tight. I have had for since the sun went down.

He puts his hands on my chest. I put my lips to his. I hold a hand up, the force of it holding my uncle back. I let it go. I let all of it go. I empty myself into the Fireman’s mouth. He drops the match.

“Go,” I whisper as I fall to my knees. He steps back. My uncle cries out and reaches for him. He trips over me.